You Won’t Believe How Much Money Alvin and the Chipmunks Make

As of now, the American public has access to a national treasure: ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.’ The rambunctious rodents are at it again in another madcap musical adventure; this time Alvin, Simon and Theodore and their Chipette counterparts Brittany, Jeanette and Eleanor, go on a cruise ship vacation with the always-irritable Dave Seville. But Alvin’s hijinks result in all six of the cute and the cuddly chipmunks getting stranded on a deserted tropical island. They’ll have to learn to work together to get back home … and bust out some new songs along the way.

You may read that plot description and think it’s mindless fluff designed to entertain only the smallest children, but you’d be scoffing at the selling point for a billion dollar juggernaut. Just how financially lucrative has the ‘Chipmunks’ franchise been since it began in 2007? Moviefone has put together a handy graph to show you!

(Since the singing chipmunks were once lonely little orphans who were rescued by their talent manager, Moviefone decided to compare the Chipmunks’ movie dollars with some real charities devoted to animal welfare and art achievement. And in honor of the island setting of ‘Chipwrecked,’ we threw in an actual island for reference.)

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The first ‘Alvin’ movie cost $ 60 million to make; the second one cost $ 75 million. Each movie then went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales. So if you’re one of those weirdos that hates the ‘Chipmunk’ movies, you can now understand how much of an outcast you are; why would so many people willingly hand over their money to the ‘Chipmunks’ movies if they were a bad thing?